Good choice for young couples with first child. Has it all - alcohol, drugs, sex . . . but just a smattering of each to outline the changes in couples and their lives designated by the "before" and "after" of first child.Bit goofy premise - Dad goes out for breakfast with 6 mo. old - diner is closed - ends up at airport and then in Barbados. Sure!?! However, Mom is dealing with her own issues and manages not to end up in total panic mode - thus the unfolding of the revelations of a weekend.I liked the book, especially since it was quick and easy reading and interesting enough to keep those pages turning. ( )

Having a baby has divided the lives of John and Veronica into before and after in The Sunshine When She’s Gone, a first novel by short story writer Thea Goodman. Six months after the difficult birth, baby Clara still hasn’t slept through the night. Exhausted, John and Veronica go to work, care for the baby, and count up hours of sleep they got or didn’t get. At the start of the story, which takes place over the course of one weekend, John spent a sleepless Thursday night waiting for the baby to cry out, realizing with amazement, early next morning, that she hadn’t woken up. Impulsively, John decides to take the baby for breakfast down the street from their Soho apartment. When he finds his favorite diner closed, John (with Clara, still sleeping, nestled into the baby carrier on his chest) even more impulsively grabs a cab and tries to decide where he could spend some time with the baby. Rejecting the few usual options, John has a sudden, strong urge to take the baby on a trip out of a New York City winter to the sunshine of the Caribbean island where Veronica grew up going on vacation with her family. A wild adventure – playing hooky from a job he hates and spending time with his infant daughter whom he loves – and it will give Veronica a break.As the weekend progresses, the book switches back and forth so readers know what John is doing and then what Veronica does in the same time period, believing he and the baby are at his mother’s although she has been unable to reach him by phone. In this time outside of their usual experience, each of them goes through wild mood swings, from calm reflection to intense anxiety, and comes to new realizations about love, marriage, and parenthood.If you like New York stories, books about couples breaking out of their normal, relatively privileged lives, or if you like novels about adjusting to life with a new baby, you should enjoy The Sunshine When She’s Gone. I did.Read complete review at Bay State Reader's Advisory blog. ( )

I think many of the previous reviews make good points. This isn’t an “enjoyable” book per se. The characters aren't completely likable. Each have serious flaws; they are both selfish. John and Veronica seem to be lost. And the fact that John splits with the baby, doesn't seem to startle Veronica quite as much as it should. And John never really realizes the extent of what he has done.

Although, I’m not in the same situation as the characters in this book, I understood where they were coming from. I thought the scenes with John searching for milk for his new baby humorous. I wanted to strangle Veronica for being horrible. But at the very end, I feel I rallied behind both characters and felt genuinely bad for them. I hoped they found what they were looking for; no matter how impossible that might be.

I'm afraid I can't say that I liked this book very much. I didn't hate it, and I finished it, but it was a bit of a chore. The plot was just too far fetched. Ones does not just take the baby to a foreign country on a early morning whim. Nor does one get high with a guy he meets on the street when caring for said baby. Unless I'm totally out of touch with what it's like to be a parent now a days, I found it to be just a very silly premise. The characters were also not really nice people - in my humble opinion. The husband is away for a day so the wife sleeps with an ex-beau? Again, not how I would hope most people act. So, a bit of a disappointment for me. ( )

Wikipedia in English

A fresh, funny, and wisely observed debut novel about marriage—about the love, longing and ambivalence exposed when a husband takes the baby on a highly unusual outing

When Veronica Reed wakes up one frigid January morning, two things are “off”—first of all, she has had a good night’s sleep, which hasn’t happened in months, and second, both her husband and her baby are gone. Grateful for the much-needed rest, Veronica doesn’t, at first, seriously question her husband’s trip out to breakfast with baby Clara. Little does she know, her spouse has fled lower Manhattan, with Clara, for some R&R in the Caribbean.

Told through alternating points of view, The Sunshine When She's Gone explores the life-changing impact of parenthood on a couple as individuals and as partners. Thea Goodman brings us into intimacies made tense by sleep-deprivation and to losses and gains made more real by acknowledging them. Here is the story of a couple pushed to the edge and a desperate father’s attempt give them both space to breathe.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:08:47 -0400)

▾Library descriptions

Follows a young couple over one life-changing weekend during which the husband flees lower Manhattan with his newborn daughter for a weekend in the Caribbean, while his wife tries to recapture who she was before the baby.